Be the change...

This email just came into my inbox a few minutes ago. Chris gave me permission to repost it here:

Hello, all,
Just wanted to share some good news. The process we all went through at Temple Sinai last fall to determine what social justice need called to us most started some life changes humming for me. The upshot is that I left my writing and producing career and entered an alternative program for teacher training in order to teach in high-needs DC schools. I've been at a summer institute in Baltimore for the past six weeks and just received my assignment for the fall. To my great delight, I'll be a teaching resident at Wheatley Education Campus! I deeply appreciate the committed, thoughtful dialogue that contributed to my arrival at this place in life, and I look forward to coordinating my identities as a Temple Sinai congregant and a Wheatley teacher.

Happy rest of summer to you all,
Chris Intagliata

Be A Superhero!

You are needed for a superhero task. Literally. But don't be alarmed. It is easier to be a superhero than you thought. Two of my rabbinical school classmates, Phyllis and Michael Sommer, recently learned that their son, Sam, has leukemia. Phyllis keeps a blog and has asked for our help. She wrote this:
  Send me your photos (I'll print them out and send along with my own - to be posted soon).

As I put Sam to bed on Friday night, I sang Debbie [Friedman's] Mi Sheberach, a prayer for healing.The conversation afterward went something like this:
Me: Do you know how many temples there are like ours around the country?
Sam: Um...a thousand?
Me: (impressed) okay, that sounds like a good number. Do you realize that at, say, 500 of those, people said "Sammy Sommer" tonight when they sang that prayer?
Sam: Wait, you mean when you go like this? (and he held out his hand just like I do when I ask for names for healing) And people say names?
Me: Yep.Same: I don't believe you. That is too many people.
Me: Ah, but you're wrong.
Sam: We don't have friends in 500 places.
ME: Wanna bet?

Each day, I get emails and texts and Facebook posts and tweets. Sam doesn't quite get the volume of people who inhabit my phone. I want to show him.

If you want to help me show Sam how many people are on his team, so he can feel the love:

Take a photograph of yourself wearing your favorite superhero shirt 
(or holding up their logo...or just smiling!)

 

We will hang all the pictures on Sam's wall...Team Superman Sam!

What We Are Not

There were tears at Yad VaShem and hush-voiced, angry curses. Yad VaShem is a low highpoint of the trip. The weight of the stories, the gruesome photos, the video testimonies of survivors and even the building’s design are unbearably attractive and repulsive at the same time. The place is packed with guided groups of young, Israeli soldiers brought here as part of their training. They embody an answer to the question of what we should do with our feelings about the Holocaust. “Never Again,” can mean: never again will we be unarmed and unable to defend ourselves.  The image from “Eagles Over Auschwitz” of IAF attack jets flying over the death camp says the same thing. The building’s design shares another message: the best response to the Holocaust is simply to live here in Israel. The exhibition starts with projected images of Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust: smiling faces, parties, culture, religion. From outside, however, one can see that the screening room is a section of building that hangs precipitously over a cliff with no support underneath. The end of the museum opens widely onto a balcony overlooking the Jerusalem hills. It says that our story ends not with utter destruction but renewed life; with real houses filled with Jews living normally in their ancient homeland. The living land and people of Israel itself is the closing shot of the museum.

Undeniably, the Holocaust has a grip on the heart and memory of the Jewish people. But another response is to remember that it is not our only story and can not be our defining characteristic. Coming to Israel is a kind of pilgrimage inasmuch as it condenses into a short space and time almost everything about Jewish life, history and identity. One of our teens, Gabrielle, got that message just a day or two before we visited Yad VaShem.  After meeting students at Yemin Orde, seeing the treasure of exhibits at the Israel museum and learning about every other aspect of Jewish life, she said it simply, “We are not all about the Holocaust.” It is never to be forgotten and never to be repeated, whatever the cost.  But remembering it shall not be everything we are. A trip to Israel is one of the best ways to see that we are about so much more (just look at another high point in this photo).